The present invention relates to a new and improved apparatus for addressing newspapers, journals, periodicals and other printed products. The present invention also relates to a new and improved shipping system or line containing such apparatus for addressing newspapers, journals, periodicals and other printed products.
In its more specific aspects, the invention relates to a new and improved construction of apparatus for addressing newspapers, journals, periodicals and other printed products, which apparatus is of the type comprising a stationary printer, typically an ink jet printer, and conveying means for guiding the printed products past the printer, the conveying means and printer having matched conveying and printing velocities. Control means serve for initiating a printing operation of the printer each time a printed product passes through the printing zone or region of the printer.
An apparatus of such type is known, for example, from the printed publication entitled "Video Jet Mailer", issued by A. B. Dick Company, Elk Grove Village, Ill., U.S.A., in 1980. In this apparatus the printed products to be addressed are continuously conveyed past downwardly directed printing heads of an ink jet printer while more or less freely resting upon a conveyor belt and while in spaced relation from each other.
The arrival of each single specimen or copy at the printing zone of the ink jet printer is directly sensed by an electronic detector which, then, initiates the printing operation. With this system there can be taken into account irregular gaps or spacings between consecutive printed products, so that each printed product can be addressed in the zone or region provided therefor. However, the known apparatus is hardly capable of synchronously addressing the entire output of a rotary printing press arriving in an imbricated product formation. For this purpose either the conveying velocity of the printed products would have to be increased, i.e. the product stream arriving in an imbricated formation would have to be spread apart to such an extent that gaps are formed between consecutive ones of the printed products, or else the individual product specimens would have to be directly seized or engaged in the arriving imbricated product stream or formation, something which is associated with appreciable difficulties and thus unreliable. However, it is in no way the ink jet printer which in the first instance opposes increasing the feed or conveying velocity of the printed products reposing upon the conveyor belt, since each printing head in modern day ink jet printers, wherein one printing head is provided for each line of the address to be printed, is capable of printing far more than one thousand characters per second. Quite to the contrary, it is more so the printed products themselves which have a certain mass and at the same time possess a certain vulnerability to damage which cannot readily withstand such an increase in the conveying velocity.
Additionally, the signal initiating the printing operation in the aforementioned known apparatus becomes meaningless after having initiated the printing operation. This is so because the relative position of each printed product with respect to the conveying device is undefined or at least only momentarily defined, since the printed product, as already mentioned, rests freely upon a conveyor belt. Accordingly, the utilization of this signal is restricted to the printing operation.